Water damage and mold are issues we deal with in the Del Norte County real estate market quite often. In a county where we routinely get 70" of rain a year it is pretty important to be vigilant about checking for water issues and getting on them quickly when discovered. It may not seem like a huge problem at the moment, but it can open a big can of worms when you go to sell your home.

My ultimate goal in this series is to make Las Vegas Home Buyersaware of the challenges of a specific home’s eligibility for financing.

Congratulations! Your lender just approved you to purchase a Las Vegas area homeby looking at your check stubs, debt to income ratio and you are now approved to purchase a Las Vegas area home!

Hold the phone here, *you* may be eligible to purchase a home but is the house eligible for financing? This series is designed for you to research a home’s eligibility for financing.

DISCLOSURE: I am not a lender, title company, home inspector, contractor or appraiser. I am only speaking from personal experience by working with financed Las Vegas area home buyers. Hopefully you have hired a Las Vegas area real estate agentwho will be able to spot things that can *potentially* cause problems with your financing (mostly FHA/VA) before your contract to purchase a Las Vegas area home.

Much of Las Vegas is currently priced in fire sale status. Many times when you see unusually inexpensive homes there is a reason – they are not eligible for financing and the seller does not wish to rehabilitate the home to make it eligible for financing.

Today’s topic at hand is “Water Damage & Mold“.

Water Damage & Mold may occur for various reasons:

A Construction Defect From a Slow Leak

Malicious Exit From Previous Occupant

The “Elements” or Weather

Something “Accidental”

The effects of water damage and mold could be from deferred maintenance, recent or can occur in the middle of a transaction.

An example of deferred maintenance would be a leaky roof (weather elements) or construction defect such as an incorrectly plumbed or faulty toilet base & wax ring.

Even though we don’t have “Freezing Elements” too often here, it does happen every once in a while resulting in a cracked pipe here and there. More often than not, weather elements would be from heat & lack of utilities – baking, melting and cracking plumbed items.

Accidents do happen and some you have to wonder about bordering on being “malicious” from a former occupant. An example of this would be: a refrigerator water valve or plumbing valve left on. Water company comes to turn on water and forgets to check meter. House gets flooded. Another example would be a deep nail or screw in the wall securing something and it hits a pipe – water may pour down walls.

Many of the above examples may cause problems with lenders funding a loan. Sometimes the sellers are willing to remedy the situation, many times in the case ofREO (aka BANK OWNED)– not.

A good home inspector will have a moisture meter on hand to be able to tell if a suspicious water damage or moldy area is dry or if moisture is still present and feeding the moldy source.

If your financing goes “kerplunk” due to a water damage or moldy mess, you may want to consider qualifying for an FHA 203K rehab loan!

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Fran, thank you for reblogging this. I missed the original post. I have just closed a transaction where the FHA appraisal asked for a mold inspection. I thought we would never be able to close... But in the end everything worked out. I gave the keys to my buyers today.

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